Monday, February 24, 2014

Once you get on certain kinds of mailing lists, you never got off, or at least so it seems. After my parents passed away, I had their mail forwarded to my house, thus increasing (in a bad way) the volume and variety of junk mail I get.

One thing I seem to get a lot in the mail are pictures of polar bears. There are a lot of pandas, sea turtles, and white bunnies, but polar bears seem to top the the list.

Inside the envelope or out, polar bears are everywhere. They are hyped as the face of global warming --- large, cute, and very endangered.

They also are part of most zoos. In the San Diego Zoo, for enrichment, they give the bears carrots to play with. (Keeping animals sane and active in zoos is a real challenge. Other kinds of enrichment provided to carnivores are blood Popsicles, chunks of tree trunk, and elk antlers.)

And of course, natural history museums like them too. There are a lot of stuffed polar bears, both in L.A. and across all the cities of the world. This one is in San Diego.

So what's the story? Are they as endangered as the press would have us believe, or is this some kind of liberal, biased, unreasonable, scare tactic? I am sure we have all seen a poster or mailing with one lonely polar bear huddled on the final ice floe.

This question has been asked by others. In my files I have a copy of this magazine which asks the same question.

On one hand, the evidence of decline is hard to deny. There have indeed been cases of polar bears hybridizing with grizzly bears. There are also documented cases recently of bear cannibalism: the hungry dad bear digs out a mama bear from her dean, then kills her and eats her. The babies starve, are eaten, or get crushed in the collapse of the cave. We know that arctic ice is diminishing by overall volume and know too, globally, temperatures are rising.

Polar bears have been seen swimming in ice-free sea, 100 miles from land. Apparently, some died of exhaustion swimming this way.

And yet on the other hand, some of the reports are so alarmist that it's hard to take them seriously. If polar bears number in the 10,000 to 20,000 range (and they may well), then the idea that they'll be extinct tomorrow or even the decade after tomorrow, that just does not hold up. But where's the truth?

The decline though seems very real. I have been to look at polar bears first hand, is one reason I know that some of these stories are trustworthy. My wife and I went on board a schooner to sail to the Arctic one summer. It's called the Noorderlicht ("northern light") and oh, this is one beautiful ship.

This part of Norway is called Svalbard. When you land at the final air strip, you have to be careful about the free-roaming wildlife, as this sign indicates.

And sure enough, over the course of several weeks, we did indeed see many living, wild, free, undead polar bears. Here's a frisky cub so cute he could be on the cover of an eco-swag catalogue.

There were other animals new to me too, seals and foxes. Even the famous walrus of song and legend made an appearance.

But I do have to admit, there were times when the bears seemed voracious, as if the general eco-line of "they're all starving to death" were true. But then all bears seem voracious to me all the time. I've seen dozens of bears in the wild, including grizzly bears, black bears, and even one in India called the sloth bear. If it's not hibernating, a bear is probably hungry. I could feed Lucy my mutt dog pork chop cutlets all day and still she would pretend to be hungry for more. It's just the nature of "feast or famine" wildlife: if there's food, gorge yourself. If I had been feeding Lucy all day long, when my wife got home, Lucy would go to the door and give her best "I'm so neglected" look, and try to cadge a few pork chops from my wife, too.

So even agreeing that polar bears look hungry most of the time no matter that the actual conditions, statistics show that some populations overall are losing weight, producing fewer young, and declining, year to year to year.

One problem is, it's a big place, the high Arctic, and to do census work is nearly impossible. There are not enough helicopters to go around, nor enough funding to send biologists to count in every piece of ice and tundra. Just compare that to something local. Let's say it were important to know how many coyotes were living in the Antelope Valley. First, we would have to decide what we even mean by the "Antelope Valley." Does Gorman count? Cal City? Acton? Second is when to do the survey --- often (though not always) coyotes are nocturnal. If we used some kind of night-vision or infrared goggles, can we be sure we're not counting feral dogs, skunks, bobcats, or even small mountain lions?

Third, even if we do come up with a perfectly reliable number --- we know for sure that 1,483 coyotes are alive and well as of 6 a.m. today in the Antelope Valley --- how can we then know anything stable about their status? We would not know if they were expanding or contracting their population, and even if we knew for sure which of those it was, we would not know why. It could be global warming or it could just be that the landfill fence has a hole in it, so more coyotes are getting more tummy-loads of garbage for more nights in a row, so their pups are doing better this year than they were last. It could be a one-time thing, not an actual trend.

Maybe we should just be happy looking at coyotes in the museum.

Even though it's dead, seeing a polar bear in a museum somehow feels less upsetting than seeing a dead one just out in the wide world. I once stayed with an Inuit family on an island off the coast of Nome, half way to Siberia. (I was on a bird study trip.) They had a dead polar bear frozen in their service porch. Here is a different one --- dead of unknown causes --- I found on a beach in Svalbard.

Global warming may or may not have had the slightest thing to do with this one, but I must say, it was a shock, either way.

After reading all of the comments, pro and con, my thoughts are these. (1) Global warming will reduce ice, and in doing so, speed up further warming. (Black mud warms up faster than white ice, et cetera.) (2) Some polar bear populations may be able to find alternatives, eg, raiding land-based goose colonies, eating berries as grizzly bears do, or getting good at finding fish and seals via ice at times other than high summer. Some won't, though. These are essentially marine mammals --- sort of like four-legged killer whales. They're designed to operate differently than do, say, grizzly bears.

(3) Does that mean polar bears will be extinct by 2050?

No. One sees a lot of numbers but the actual situation (as with the coyotes) is much too complex and consisting of too many unknown variables to pick an exit date, and even if one were to pick a date, that one is too soon. In that sense, there is a degree of alarmist reporting in the popular media.

(4) Can zoos help? No, not really. A zoo polar bear won't be able to hunt in the wild, and there just are not that many, and especially not in prime breeding condition.

(5) Does it matter? After all, a jungle cockroach may go extinct before sunset tonight, and we all will sleep as soundly as ever. Will it matter if the ice thaws and the bears go extinct?

It may, but not for the reason you think. It may not be the bear itself we should worry about, but the causes behind its decline.

Dr. Steven C. Amstrup of Polar Bears International writes "I cannot overemphasize that hybridization provides no solution
to the polar bear's dilemma. And to the extent there may be increased
hybridization, it probably will be of little consequence to polar bears
facing dramatic declines in their habitat base. Polar bears are likely
to starve out of their present ranges long before their genes are
swamped by those of grizzly bears. If some polar bear genes persist in
grizzly bears, after polar bears have disappeared from their current sea
ice home, that fact will be irrelevant with regard to efforts to retain
the magnificent and highly specialized life form we now know as the
polar bear."

He concludes, "Discussions of hybridization aside, it is important to remember that
by the time we allow the world to warm enough that the polar bears' sea
ice habitat disappears, challenges to humans will be so great that no
one will be thinking about polar bear conservation."

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The AVC Blog is curated by Charles Hood, Language Arts, and he can be reached at chood@avc.edu. This blog does not represent the views of the Board of Trustees or the District as a whole. To leave comments, you need to be logged into some kind of blogspot or gmail account, or so it seems. Sorry about that: it's just how the system is set up. Hood also can forward comments internally.

Monday, February 10, 2014

The AVC English Department is a bit split. Some faculty live "down below" (which always sounds like a descent into Hades, doesn't it?) while some of us live out here. In my case, I live in East Palmdale with my wife, pets, mountain bikes, kayaks, and various kids and stepkids, depending which of them are passing through on migration from one life to another. Bill Vaughn lives nearby, which is a good thing, especially when I need to have more bookshelves built.

Note to our wives: see, we do too use eye protection and hearing protection. There is not even a can of beer in sight! Not only does my house have good, sturdy bookcases (lots and lots of them), but some of the windows are custom-made stained glass panels, courtesy of ace designer and all-around artist Nicelle Davis.

In the backyard is a stone sculpture that not only quotes Stonehenge in England but alludes visually to the "standing stone" monuments found all over Northern Europe. It's made from limestone slabs that originally were gate posts and fence posts in Kansas, and they each have embedded in them hand-forged iron nails and lots of fossils. My wife calls this art piece "Hoodhenge." The tallest pillars are eight feet high.

It seems to me a good life, especially one built on a teacher's salary. In contrast, when I am in L.A. at art events I often am asked where I live, and when I say the Antelope Valley, there's a general note of condescension, even pity. I am either looked at like somebody who likes to have marital relations with sheep or else as some tragic artist, sent into exile for some unspeakable misdeed. The comparison here is to Ovid, on the three greatest poets of Ancient Rome, who in some way got on the wrong side of Caesar Augustus and got himself sent into exile to a port on the Black Sea, the same body of water on which one finds present-day Sochi. (We hope that Ovid's hotel at least had a roof.)

The thing about the Antelope Valley that few people realize is how connected we can be to the rest of Los Angeles, and indeed, to the rest of the world, if only we take the effort.

Coming up later this month are several things that prove this. In a previous post we interviewed Rachel Jennings and her thoughts on Romeo and Juliet. That production is still running. Meanwhile, from the Royal Opera House in London comes a classic version of Swan Lake. I am on the mailing list for the Royal Opera House simply to feel a mild connection with London, my favorite city in the world. I do wish I could go back more often than I do. Yet here it is, coming to us.

The Royal Opera House's magical production of Swan Lake was created for The Royal Ballet in 1987 by Anthony Dowell. Zenaida Yanowsky and American dancer Nehemiah Kish
take the lead roles in what is surely the greatest of all Romantic
ballets. In this timeless tale of good vs evil, Prince Siegfried chances
upon a flock of swans while out hunting. When one of the swans turns
into a beautiful woman he is instantly captivated, but will his love
prove strong enough to break the evil spell that she is under?

Don't miss this dazzling production in select US cinemas for one night only.

It is going to play at the local Cinemarks. Also coming soon to Cinemark is the theatrical version of War Horse, which is about 1000% better than the movie.

Want something more immediate and "in person"? One of the Canon Masters of Light is due to come visit us, on 25 February. Here is a bio:

Workshop: Lewis Kemper, Feb. 25 2014

Lewis
Kemper has been photographing the natural beauty of North America, and
its parklands for over 30 years. During his extensive travels, he has
been to 47 states from Alaska to Florida. His work has been exhibited
and published in magazines, books, and calendars worldwide.

Before moving west, he
received a BA in Fine Art Photography from the George Washington
University in 1976. The grandeur of the west beckoned and Lewis moved to
Yosemite National Park, where he lived for 11 years. From 1978 until
1980, he worked at The Ansel Adams Gallery. Working at the gallery gave
him the opportunity to meet, observe and learn from some of the greatest
photographers of our time. “The experience of working at The Ansel
Adams Gallery was very influential in my development as a photographer,”
he states.

Lewis photographs in color using Canon digital cameras and 4 x 5 cameras. His work has been sold for editorial and commercial uses in
over 16 different countries ranging from national ads to book covers.

Kemper’s
photographs are in many private collections as well as in the permanent
collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Kaiser Permanente. His
work has been shown nationally in galleries and museums.

His work has been published
in numerous books including publications by The Sierra Club, The
National Geographic Society, Little and Brown, APA Insight Guides,
Prentice Hall, and Hyperion Books.

Workshop topics

Light, Color and Composition: Tips to Improve your Photographs!

Compose more varied and effective image

Expand your ability to "see" images

Learn how to think about the direction and characteristics of light

Use color just as you can use lines, shape and form enhance your compositions

Grasp the concept of the color wheel and how to usecolor relationships deliberately to build vibrant images

Simplify your images and emphasize the important elements of the composition

Both of these events are on nights when I am working with writing students in my English 097 class. If I adjust the syllabus a bit, we can have a field trip to one or the other events, but not both. It is going to be a tough decision to make! A dance program offers great cultural literacy and the analogy of text-as-movement, while Mr. Kemper will talk about composition, framing, and visual structure, all of which also translate directly into skills we cover in a writing class. It's a tough split indeed.

Although I for one think many of us could get down to L.A. more than we do, it's also true, the world comes to us all the time. As William Mulholland said when the L.A. Aqueduct was turned on for the first time in 1913, "There it is. Take it."

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The AVC Blog is curated by Language Arts member Charles Hood. He can be reached at chood@avc.edu. This blog does not represent an endorsement of these events by the campus as a whole, the Board of Trustees, or the Antelope Valley College District. Further, if you put large stone slabs upright in your backyard, be sure to anchor them securely. After all, this is earthquake country.